"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

January 31, 2006

I've been mulling over the term "embedded", and its implications for persons or entities described as such. The word is much in vogue since the Department of Defense started embedding reporters with troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Embedded" has connotations of an enveloping or impacted nature: the head of a deer tick embedded in skin, fossils embedded in sediment, a foreign body in a larger mass.

Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary 1913 edition offers two meanings for the adjective "embedded." It could describe something "enclosed firmly in a surrounding mass" or "inserted as an integral part of a surrounding whole." The first definition could easily describe the reporter assigned to a combat infantry unit, or the pit of a plum. The second implies a closer association, more organic in nature and perhaps symbiotic. Embedded meanings of this sort season my prose, and used to be the bread and butter of English majors before Academia barred its willing throat to the nihilist vampires of deconstruction.

The embedded thing risks blurring the lines between itself and its environment. That is one of the main reasons why United States Foreign Service personnel rotate from one posting to another every two or three years. The government justifies this practice because it allows flexibility to respond to changing overseas priorities and keeps the work fresh for those in the field. It also rather conveniently keeps diplomats from "going native" and identifying too closely with local concerns over our national interests. Relationships need to be reestablished with every new rotation and this leaves a relatively small window of opportunity for effective and sustainable partnerships to develop before the next transition. Add to that the inevitable changes in foreign policy that come with each new US administration, and you have a system that reinforces a sharp and clear line between "us" and "them".

Embedding reporters with military units in the field, conversely, is a public relations and propaganda policy that deliberately reinforces their identification with the armed forces and their mission. Nothing bonds a journalist closer to those in uniform than coming under fire and relying on soldiers for protection. If truth is the first casualty of war, objectivity follows close on its heels. The view in combat is very narrow and it is difficult to navigate in the fog of war. As important as telling the soldiers' story is, a reporter embedded in this sense risks becoming synonymous with "compromised" or "biased."

I am in a professional situation that could also be described as "embedded", although given its contemporary connotation I get nervous groans from my colleagues when I offer that analogy. I am a new employee of a national conservation organization, The Trust for Public Land, leading a joint program between TPL and the Housatonic Valley Association or HVA. Each organization brings its own unique strengths and capabilities to the partnership and derives benefits from its association. Because of the nature of community-based conservation work, my position is based locally, rather in the state TPL office in New Haven. I have an office within the HVA building and interact daily with my colleagues in this office, which fosters a sense of shared endeavor and teamwork on the ground. It reinforces the partnership and deepens my understanding of HVA's interests and how the partnership can make the best use of shared organizational resources.

From a purely practical standpoint, being based within the local infrastructure of HVA solves a lot of problems for TPL, which prior to my hire did not have its own local presence. It also avoids other tensions which could have arisen had TPL decided to plant its own flag and try and rally all the local conservation groups in the area -over a score by my last count- around a Litchfield Hills Greenprint banner. As things stand, the project will have plenty of work to do to to forge a shared conservation vision and effective collaboration among these various conservation players with similar orientations but different mandates.

Still, my TPL identity is newly formed and is not the first thing out of my mouth when I'm working within the Greenprint area. My business cards, which have yet to arrive, have a distinct, Greenprint brand identity and list the two organizations that sponsor the project on the reverse side. Neither organization wants the Greenprint to spin off entirely on its own, but see it more as the intersection of two, linking rings - not fetters - that together will be able to galvanize support for conservation efforts to keep pace with development pressure in this area. In this project model, I am more like the solder that holds the links together than an embedded object.

What I admire most about TPL is its comfort with my close association with our conservation partner. In other instances, a large conservation organization might well be nervous that I would not be able to see the big picture outside the Greenprint area and lose my sense of objectivity. While it may take some time for all participants in this project to see it as an integrated whole rather than primarily from the standpoint of either organization, I believe it can become that kind of partnership. Embedded in that sense can be transformative and mutually sustaining, and that is a risk I'll gladly take.

January 30, 2006

The landscape of Northwest Connecticut is peppered with biblical references. There is a community called Sodom, about whose namesake even the impious have heard. We have the lovely Town of Sharon, but no Rose of Sharon, alas, to compete with the ubiquitous multiflora. There is also Goshen, where "...Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen; and they had possessions therein, and grew, and multiplied exceedingly." (Genesis 47:27).

I live in North Canaan, named for "a land that floweth with milk and honey" but also "a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof" (Numbers. 13:27, 32). The frontier of the Hebrew Exodus and the frontier of colonial Connecticut had more in common, it seems, than the promise of opportunity for God's chosen in a howling wilderness. The land could be bountiful but it could also devour. A classic interpretation of this biblical paradox, and one that finds expression in frontier societies and where frontier attitudes remain, is that only the strong of will and body can tame the land and make it yield its riches.

"The eleventh-century scholar Shlomo Ben-Yitzhak (Rashi) who studied and worked in France, and is considered the foremost Jewish interpreter of the Old Testament, advanced a more compelling explanation. In his view, the land of Canaan can either be the land of milk and honey or a land that consumes those who dwell there. God intended it to be that way: The choice of whether it would be a land of abundance or devastation was left to the inhabitants themselves. Should the governors be just and caring, the people compassionate, abiding by the highest morality in their day-to-day conduct and respecting each other's rights, then they should live in peace. If they made this choice, then the land would indeed exude milk and honey. But if they decide to live in opposition to these standards, then violence, cruelty, and hatred, greed, venom,revenge, and retribution will be the result, and they will eventually perish through their own misdeeds."

This reading of the Canaan paradox would tend to argue toward a society that valued stewardship over resource exploitation, that protected the rights of the individual without diminishing that same right in others or depleting the common store. It would also seem to run counter to prevailing attitudes today in some quarters, both nearby and farther afield, regarding private landowner rights, natural resource management, and the role of government in safeguarding the common wealth. Jared Diamond has much to say on this subject in his recent book, Collapse, and others have made similar observations. Where Garrett Hardin identified a Tragedy of the Commons, there could just as easily be said to be a Tragedy of the Private, for private ownership has degraded more habitat and destroyed more natural resources than all ther world's communal area pastoralists. Private ownership, for all its flaws, has also protected vast acreages, yet the pace of land conversion from open space to built environments far outstrips the capacity of private efforts to conserve it.

For Canaan, and communities like it, to sustain the flow of milk and honey, we will need to value our rural character, our affordable quality of life, and our ecological wealth. Although it goes against our independent Yankee grain, we may need to set limits on ourselves so that these may endure. When the gravel mine down the road is tapped out, houses and not farmland will replace it. When Wal-Mart comes looking to plant a huge box store in the Litchfield Hills, it is unlikely to take root in the communities with up-to-date zoning and comprehensive open space and development plans. We need not follow the path that will make of this place "a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof."

January 27, 2006

Every so often, my various alma matres send me their alumni/ae surveys, invariably asking for my occupation along with my charitable contribution. Now, not only am I gainfully employed, but I have what I regard as a marvelous career as a professional conservationist. Yet try as I might, I never find that box among my choices on the survey checklist and have to settle for the nonprofit catch-all or the highly marginal other category.

Why is that? We may not occupy as large a sector of the workforce as, say, the entertainment industry, or those engaged in domestic spying, but there are more than 1,250 land trusts in this country and some considerable proportion of them have paid staff. The largest conservation organizations in the nation -and I've worked for two of them- have hundreds and in some cases thousands of employees on their payrolls. Conservation is a legitimate career but it still doesn't make the cut at survey time.

Sometimes there's a box for Environmental Management. When I started out in land stewardship, I looked hopefully at this category. I hoped to find a place with fellow prescribed fire practitioners, wielders of weed wrenches, and grassland restoration experts. It seems instead that this group was comprised largely of extractive rather than restorative enterprises, along with assorted sanitation engineers, brown-fields developers and the like.

The problem may be not the need for a narrower Conservation category, but for a broader base for conservation. It has to become a mainstream value, friends, or it will remain a marginal priority. A lot of folks consider themselves conservationists who reject the label of environmentalist, or "environmeddlists" as the logger muttering into his beer next to me in a bar in Forks, Washington described us back in 1989.

Remember that the root of "conserve" and "conservative" is the same. I don't care what your political persuasion, we all have strong feelings about our land, the place we live, and the powerful changes that are happening to the landscape and in our communities. We can respond in fear, in isolation, in denial or in hope, but respond we must because the land as we know it won't endure unless we decide it's worth making sacrifices for. We may differ as to the means, and these differences can be used as wedges to divide us, but even private property rights advocates don't want the actions of their neighbors to impact their land and degrade their quality of life.

So I'll check off the other box and write-in conservationist. There are more of us out there, across the professions, than any single label can describe.

January 24, 2006

It's been a long time since the days of "Banned in Boston", but back in the late 1990s one little, glossy pamphlet caused such a stink that a state agency was compelled to pull it from circulation. The offending manuscript was neither profane nor intended to outrage social sensibilities, but rather an attempt to inform the general public about plants which several reputable botanists and the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program considered to be invasive.

A Guide to Invasive Plants in Massachusetts by Pam Weatherbee, Paul Somers and Tim Simmons highlighted 17 plant species for special emphasis, and by and large these were the usual suspects. It also included a page listing many more species that the authors considered problem plants, and some of these were more obscure, and their impact on Massachusetts unclear. As an outreach tool, it had attractive design features and was intended to reach a broad audience. Its greatest impact, however, was in the negative response by the nursery industry it unwittingly provoked.

Ever since President Clinton's February 3, 1999 executive order establishing a national invasive species council, the nursery and landscaping industry has been on notice that invasive plants are a serious issue. It is no secret that many, but by no means all , of the invasive plant species now established in the United States were originally horticultural introductions. A smaller number of these plants remain important in the nursery trade. It serves no purpose to apportion blame for past introductions and, in any case, there is plenty of responsibility to go around. The USDA, you may recall, pushed Autumn olive as a "living hedge." Nonetheless, the Massachusetts invasive plant guide put the horticultural industry on the defensive, and it was quick to respond.

The leadership of Massachusetts nursery and landscaping organizations looked at this state pamphlet and had profound concerns, not only about its economic impacts, but on the very premise by which species were selected for inclusion as invasive. The criteria used to identify invasive plants in Massachusetts were not explicit, nor was it clear that objective science, rather than anecdotes, had been used to determine the species of concern.

As a result, the horticultural industry used its considerable political leverage to halt distribution of the pamphlet. The story might have ended there, with acrimony and polarization preventing any substantive, broad based action to address the problem of invasive species in the Commonwealth. Remarkably, out of a shotgun marriage, a unique partnership was forged instead between the nursery industry, land managers, conservationists, and state and federal agencies. In defiance of all expectations, this effort produced an extraordinary consensus on which plants should be considered invasive in Massachusetts and what actions ought to be done to meaningfully address the problem.

The Massachusetts Invasive Species Advisory Group (MIPAG) that emerged from this initial conflict is unlike any other invasive species council in America. It has managed to engender a high degree of trust and mutual respect among former antagonists. It has developed effective partnerships between conservation interests and the horticultural industry. Although MIPAG is not formally recognized by state statute, the reports and findings of the group are endorsed by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. Unlike other invasive species lists and bans undertaken in New Hampshire and Connecticut, where there is still intense resistance from the horticultural industry, the outcome of MIPAG's work resulted in agreement by the nursery leaders and the Bureau of Farm Products to phase out the sale and distribution of every species determined by MIPAG to be invasive or potentially invasive in the Commonwealth.

How did this collaboration succeed in Massachusetts and turn antagonists into effective partners? Is the Massachusetts case unique, for indeed such a broad-based, consensus building response to invasives has not, to my knowledge, occurred elsewhere in the United States? Or are there key conditions for the success of the Massachusetts model that could be replicated in other states?

I have served on MIPAG from its early days, and believe that an essential part of its success was that the nursery leadership was motivated to go beyond simply stopping the distribution of a list it found objectionable. It had to work with the state to come up with a viable alternative, because the writing was on the wall that regulation was on its way and it made sense to be part of the solution.

A second factor was the agreement, perhaps with deep misgivings, by all participants that if every species was to go through the same assessment criteria, then all forms, varieties, cultivars, hybrids, sub-species and synonyms of a plant determined to be invasive would also be considered invasive until shown to be otherwise by a process of scientific assessment. There are, therefore, no exceptions made for cultivars or hybrids reputed to be sterile. From a purely practical standpoint, it is very hard for enforcement agencies to determine whether the nursery stock they are monitoring is labeled or identified correctly, so even if a cultivar of barberry, for example, is shown not to be invasive, there will still need to be a way to positively identify it in the trade.

Participants in MIPAG include state and federal agency personnel dedicating their time to the project, but also many in the non-profit and for-profit sectors who serve without compensation. Furthermore, the plant assessment work of the group has been funded with generous, five figure grants from the Horticultural Research Institute, The Nature Conservancy, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This built a heightened sense of shared ownership in the process as well as its products.

When the time comes to review a species for invasiveness, MIPAG members must agree by a 2/3 majority vote that a candidate species meets the criteria. In more than 82 votes, there has been no evidence of a "tyranny of the minority". The three species of greatest economic importance to the horticultural industry - Japanese barberry, winged euonymous and Norway maple - all received unanimous votes as invasive in Massachusetts. Even Robinia pseudoacacia, which had the glaciers receded a few thousand years earlier might well have been native in New England instead of reaching its northern. natural limit in the central Appalachians, was voted after intense discussion as likely invasive in parts of the Commonwealth. The criteria are not perfect, but the system has credibility and every participant supports the process and advocates for his or her own constituencies to act on MIPAG's recommendations.

When I am invited to speak before large gatherings of the horticultural industry, I tell them it is good to be among friends. We all share a love of growing things and a belief that our work, as nursery and landscape professionals or as a conservationist, are green activities that help make the world a better place. And we have a shared problem that is ours jointly to solve. The burden of invasive species prevention and control is not the horticultural industry's alone to bear. Management of the invasives we have now, as well as holding off the new invaders, requires significant resources and our collective will to meet the challenge. Massachusetts has shown that it is possible for us to be allies in this effort.

January 21, 2006

A few years ago, I participated in a comprehensive conservation area plan for the lower Hudson Valley's 6,500-acre Great Swamp. The plan included a highly professional publication with many glossy pictures and a series of maps generated using Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. These maps included a data layer showing all the natural community types across this vast wetland complex, and it was here, for the first time, that I encountered what is certainly not native habitat in this landscape but now undeniably a fait accompli: a widely distributed invasive community type identified in the plan as a common reed/purple loosestrife wetland.

Did ecologists throw in the towel when they characterized this heavily invaded wetland by its dominant, invasive species cover? Has an invasive Phragmites australis/Lythrum salicaria plant community naturalized to such an extent here that it has effectively replaced the native wetland habitat that otherwise would have expressed itself at these sites across the swamp? Is the previous community type gone beyond hope of restoration, and what is the likely fate of the rest of the extraordinary calcareous wetlands complex that still supports a mosaic of rare and threatened species and natural community types?

For many natural areas land managers, the challenge posed by invasive plant and animal species, and by introduced forest pests and pathogens, is often the most severe threat facing the protected lands under their stewardship. Invasive species management strategies place heavy emphasis on early detection and rapid response, since there is an exponential growth curve over time in the expense and effort required to push back an invasion and a corresponding diminished chance of eradication or effective control.

So what should be the management response when in Montana, millions of acres of range land are made unpalatable for grazing because of spotted knapweed? What can be done when the entire Florida everglades are at grave risk of being smothered under a horrifically widespread expansion of Lygodium microphyllum (old world climbing fern), or when a calcareous sloping fen that happens to be bog turtle habitat becomes infested with purple loosestrife? Do we write off these ecosystems, habitats and species occurrences and accept a far simplified expression of biodiversity, a range land no longer suitable for grazing and therefore more vulnerable to more damaging uses like fossil fuel extraction, a forest where the herbaceous layer is microstegium and garlic mustard, the shrub layer is woody invasives, and nothing in the sub-canopy or canopy is able to regenerate?

All land management is about human values. Even doing nothing and letting nature take its course is a choice to let human impacts alter the landscape. Fossil fuel use, global dispersal of invasive plant and animal material, and the expansion of some native species that can outcompete others by profiting from the resources provided by your bird feeder and trashcan are all the result of human activity and affect both working lands and wilderness. If we value natural areas with the capacity to express a full compliment of native biodiversity, the sustainable use of federal range land, and the continued viability of threatened species where they still persist, then a response is needed to the impacts of invasive species on the things we value.

In some ways, invasive species management is a bit like throwing up walls around the monastery, keeping the barbarian hordes at bay until new technology makes it safe to come out from the refuge and share the ancient knowledge preserved in the cloister with the wider world. Keeping uninvaded areas free of invasion and holding the line in hope that effective biocontrol will emerge before it is too late is often the last, best hope with some virulent invasions. There are some apparent biocontrol success stories, notably the reduction in Melaleuca quinquenervia across Florida due to a combination of introduced predators, but introducing new species to combat undesirable ones is fraught with peril and there are many instances where the hoped for solution became a greater problem than the original invader.

Invasive species will always be with us, but we can make effective management decisions about the ones we have as well as preventing those on our doorstep. It probably helps the Great Swamp managers to know where the dense infestations of phragmites and loosestrife occur across the wetlands so that they can develop containment and prevention strategies to keep areas of conservation value uninvaded.

Those areas that are now common reed/purple loosestrife community types are not biologically sterile, as Erik Kiviat and Hudsonia have dutifully documented. Some marsh birds use phragmites for nesting habitat and cover, while beekeepers consider loosestrife an important nectar source. I personally would not trade a rich, graminoid fen and the biodiversity it supports for an invaded wetland with fewer and more common species, but it is vitally important to ask what outcomes natural areas management should achieve and what reclamation activity may be needed to complement invasive species control.

There are sites in New Jersey that support the federally threatened bog turtle and are heavily invaded by loosestrife. Eradication at these sites is highly difficult and the threat of damage to the rare reptile species limits what can be done to reduce loosestrife cover. The important question at these places again reflects values and management outcomes. The conservation value of greatest importance at the site is the bog turtle, not the invaded calcareous fen. The threat posed to bog turtle from loosestrife is the loss of basking habitat due to shading. Managers have elected to take brush cutters to the 6 ft high loosestrife stems before they set seed and mow them to less than 1 foot high, allowing light to penetrate to the areas used by bog turtles. If these sites are critical to maintain for the recovery of this rare species, then the solution is to manage the invasive species for the turtle's benefit.

Jennifer Foreman Orth's Invasivespecies Blog recently discussed the possible consequences of putting some of our heavily invaded areas to use to supply invasive Phragmites australis as a thatching material in an emerging North American market. She quite rightly asks what happens to the inflorescences and whether harvesting phragmites for this purpose could be a vector for its spread. I have done some research on this subject, and believe that both the leaves and seed heads are removed from the culm before the stems are bundled and sent to the thatcher. From a practical standpoint, wild stands of phragmites need to be mowed so that only this year's growth is harvested to prevent premature biological and erosive decay when used as thatch. This use is clearly not an invasive species control method , but just as I enjoy my annual Knotweed pie - reminiscent of rhubarb when picked young - so, too, I would like to see our naturalized invaders start to earn their keep where possible.

Another miserable wetland invader, reed canary grass, is apparently a major source of biomass for electrical and thermal energy production in Europe. Conceivably, agricultural areas that are dominated with this plant and adjacent to important wetland habitats might be harvested for biomass prior to setting seed and therefore only spread from the site rhizominously.

An effective invasive species management strategy needs to integrate multiple techniques, including but not limited to preventing the spread of invasive material to the uninvaded areas we value. For those areas where the invaders are here to stay, we can certainly try to contain their spread. We can hope for a viable biocontrol solution. And in some cases, we can even make lemonade out of these uninvited lemons by finding new values in degraded habitat.

January 20, 2006

In a prior posting, Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map, I discussed the allure and the power of maps to capture our imagination, as well as the snares they present for the unwary. Since then, I have set aside my private consulting business and accepted a position with The Trust For Public Land as Director of The Litchfield Hills Greenprint Project. A critical component of this initiative will be to incorporate community-based data into mapping tools that will galvanize public support and encourage local and regional conservation partners to work toward common goals.

Of course, all the conservation maps in the world are mere tangles of vectors and blobs of pixels if they lack credibility and fail to inspire and guide conservation action. Somehow the Greenprint brand needs to stand out as distinct from other resource maps, and be embraced as relevant to local communities and conservation entities. I suspect that the dynamic qualities of the maps we will produce, all those marvelous buffer layers and wildlife corridors eliding across paper and computer screens, will be more readily grasped and embraced if the underlying layers are static, immediately recognizable as both the Greenprint and its representation of this place. The BRNC Map I have plugged on other occasions has those very qualities, but lacks the upper layers that allow it to be used to set priorities and understand natural and socio-economic processes across the landscape. My hope is that we can take the best features of both kinds of maps and create something that can truly inform conservation action and resonate with the people who live here.

When I was I graduate school, I had a professor who stressed that theory should never been seen as a blueprint, but rather as a guide for adaptive management. The blueprint model of development fails to understand that what works in one context cannot be transferred as a whole to any other situation without reflecting local constraints and resources. Arguably, a contractor should be able to erect the same building from a single set of blueprints in any similar location, but a Greenprint is both process and product and the outcome will likely be quite different from one region to another. The Litchfield Hills Greenprint is an initiative sponsored by the Trust for Public Land (TPL) and The Housatonic Valley Association (HVA), and reflects a new kind of partnership for the Greenprint model. Its success will depend on how that partnership enhances its conservation impact , and how it manages the inevitable tensions and distinct organizational identities that are part of all partnerships no matter how effective.

Walking the Berkshires will continue as my personal forum, an unapologetic and eclectic weaving of human narratives with the natural landscape of the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills, but I suspect I'll start cross-posting with a new Litchfield Greenprint blog in the coming months.

January 18, 2006

Pat Burns, a careful observer of issues confronting land trusts, has recently called attention in Nature Noted to the extraordinary high cost of land protection in places where real estate prices have reached unprecedented heights. The southern Berkshires and Litchfield Hills, where I hang my various hats, are in one such area, but the market price of desirable land here is nothing compared to the coastal islands of southern New England. There, the Nature Conservancy and Block Island Land Trust are celebrating the protection of 25 acres at a cost of slightly more than 7 million dollars.

It is worth observing that in that high wealth area, the local Block Island Land Trust has committed to raising half the total purchase price, and the deal brought an additional 15 acres under protection through various means including gifts of easements. One has to be very resourceful, as well as creative, to compete with development at these high stakes. Novel and effective techniques of conservation finance continue to emerge and have an important role to play. Nonetheless, we in the conservation community have to question whether our bedrock practice of raising money and buying interest in land - the old "Bucks and Acres" measure of success - is up to sustaining the challenge in such a real estate market, or if other tactics are needed.

As 501 (c) (3) charitable organizations, land trusts cannot purchase property above fair market value. To keep straight with the IRS and as a responsible standard practice, the conservation organization bases its purchase price on a bona fide appraisal. The problem in a hot real estate market is that the most meaningful and relevant part of the appraisal, the value of recent comparable sales, often does not reflect the true market value. Sales even six months ago may be well below what a buyer will pay today for highly desirable open space. Without other incentives, a land trust offer to purchase at appraised full fair market value cannot compete in these circumstances with a private buyer who is free to offer more.

Here's one idea. Sometimes, when the conservation importance of a property is to expand the buffer for even more significant adjacent protected lands, a land trust might consider purchasing an easement that would prevent the impacts of inappropriate development but not restrict it altogether. If, for example, the overriding reason not to have a house on a piece of land is to prevent nutrient inputs to a calcareous seepage wetland, then the main threat from adjacent development may not be the house itself but almighty suburban lawn. If you can't afford to buy the land to prevent the house, can you instead buy an easement that limits lawn size and lawn care to prevent excessive nutrient loading down slope? It might be tricky to draft an easement that is not too narrow in conservation purpose to be valid in perpetuity, and monitoring compliance would require careful easement wording, but such an easement would cost a small fraction of the underlying fee. Rather than buying one house lot to protect a small part of the watershed, why not acquire easements on a dozen of them?

The key, hard question for land trusts is to ask what alternatives to outright conservation ownership might be needed to prevent the most significant threats to lands they would like to purchase but cannot afford, even with the help of other partners. In some cases the land must be saved, period. In others, a change in local zoning, or a bond initiative, or an anti-sprawl initiative at the regional scale, may be effective alternatives to costly land deals.

January 15, 2006

What is the appropriate response to large scale, natural disturbance events in New England's forests? I posed this question recently to some ecologically-minded forester friends of mine, and in the course of that discussion we broached the controversial issue of Salvage Logging. This practice received recent exposure last week in the national press, including coverage by National Public Radio and the Christian Science Monitor. An Oregon State study of the short-term effects of timber salvage after a massive western wildfire has found that there is better seedling recruitment and less risk of fire danger in areas that were left alone following the 500,000 acre "Biscuit fire" than in areas where logging operations removed marketable timber.

Although many of the environmental issues in western forests are substantially different than those that apply in New England's Woodlands, such studies deserve our attention since the national debate over salvage logging has heretofore lacked much in the way of objective and verifiable science. Salvage logging is often touted as economically justified and is a centerpiece of President Bush's rather Orwellian-named Healthy Forests Initiative. Bush taunted John Kerry on this subject during the last presidential campaign, quipping: " My opponent says he's in touch with the West, but sometimes I think he means Western Massachusetts." Well, as my old Uncle Archie used to say about sundry sacred cows; "maybe it ain't so."

My western Massachusetts forester friends, either members of The Forest Guild or very familiar with its first principles, felt that salvage logging ought not be categorically rejected in all cases as ecologically unsound. They felt that if done as part of responsible, high quality silviculture, there may be some situations where the negative impacts of salvage logging could be mitigated while benefiting the long-term health of the forest. These are environmentally responsible foresters and I respect their long years of experience in our woodlands, but this practice deserves closer scrutiny in light of the available evidence of its ecological impacts elsewhere, and what we know about our own forest systems, before I am willing to endorse it in New England.

To begin with, the Northeast United states experiences many kinds of large-scale natural disturbance. The Great September Gale of 1815, for example, was the storm of the century, but prior to that nothing like it had been seen in New England for 180 years. In modern memory, only the great Hurricane of 1938 has surpassed it in destructive power. Both storms followed very similar paths as they tore across Long Island and made landfall on the Connecticut Coast. Both brought floods and high winds well inland and ravaged the interior countryside as well as the shore.

There are large forest stands in central New England consisting of trees of a single age class that all spouted following the near total devastation left by the 1938 Hurricane. The southern New England landscape in 1815 was predominantly open agricultural land. Otherwise, the Great September Gale would have wrought destruction in our forests making the blasted woods of 1938 pale in comparison.

Large-scale natural disturbance in New England is not limited to tropical cyclone activity. Microbursts from summer thunderstorms can create localized destruction as severe as tornadoes, which also can affect this region. In 1845, a tornado arose as a waterspout in Lake Ontario, cut a 275 mile long swath through the Adirondacks, and exited as a waterspout in Lake Champlain. Its effects are still discernible on the landscape if one knows how and where to look for them. Ice storms and early fall snowfalls can shatter tree crowns across thousands of acres. Although large scale wildfires are rare except for the pine barren regions of New England, an internal Nature Conservancy assessment of New England forest community types and fire found that nearly 80% of them across the region are fire dependent at some interval.

Natural disturbance can also occur for reasons which are not strictly historical but reflect our changing climate or the impact of introduced forest pests and pathogens such a gypsy moth Caterpillar or the hemlock woolly adelgid, the latter of which may have had an assist in its northern spread across Long Island Sound on the winds of 1991's Hurricane Bob.

Given that large disturbance events can and will continue to affect New England's forests, what are the consequences of salvage logging on forest recovery and long-term viability? There is no question that forests will look like hell after a massive wind event. Even a well managed woodlot can look pretty ugly to some after a sensitively conducted logging job. But human aesthetics need not obscure objective assessment of ecological impacts.

Harvard Forest's Dave Foster has documented different responses following the 1938 hurricane from woodlands where salvage logging occurred and those that were left to regenerate on their own. Fully half of the damaged woodlands across New England experienced timber salvage following this storm. Foster identifies several negative consequences of these logging activities when compared to unsalvaged woodlands. Among these are erosion and sedimentation associated with the logging practices of the time, loss of organic material, and the fact that not all toppled or uprooted trees died and their re-sprouting was an important part of forest recovery in places where they were not removed by logging.

I am willing to concede that the most sterling quality modern day silviculture may be able to address sedimentation, erosion, excessive soil compaction, and needless fragmentation of intact forest stands. Except for a limited number of conscientious foresters, however, mainstream forestry activities and permitted forest cutting practices fall well short of this standard. Salvage work takes place in a heavily disturbed environment, often with piles of downed timber several feet in diameter. Furthermore, there is often a rush to recover as much marketable timber as possible before it rots or the market is glutted with all that salvaged wood. I would like to think that timber salvage could be sensitively done in such conditions, but I fear that it is more likely to compound the disturbance and impact natural recovery more than it would encourage it. As such, I do not believe that timber salvage is ecologically justified in sensitive areas or ecological reserves where commercial forestry is normally excluded, such as is proposed in Massachusetts for some percentage of the Commonwealth's forest land under FSC certification.

Another finding of the Oregon State study was that, contrary to Bush administration claims, the available fuels left behind after the Biscuit fire were large diameter standing snags and not as significant a fire danger. Most of the small diameter fuels that carry an initial ground fire were still in the scorched canopies. In contrast, the timber salvage operations left large amounts of slash and course woody debris on the ground where it would be more available for future ignition.

Wildfires in deciduous, New England forests tend to creep and smolder, although they can persist for weeks and go deep in the duff layer before they are finally extinguished. While most of the nutrients are found in small diameter limbs and the tips of branches, standing snags and large, downed trees play important roles in our forests as nurse logs and microhabitats. They retain a lot of moisture as they decay, nourishing plants, fungi, and amphibians on the forest floor.

A scientist friend of mine with The Nature Conservancy says that the northern hardwood forests of the Northeast should have at least 24 large diameter logs on the ground per acre as part of its optimal complement of course woody debris! Without question, a massive hurricane or microburst will leave plenty of course woody debris in our woodlands, but timber salvage removes nutrients that cannot be readily replaced and diminishes the amount available to the recovering forest in its natural nutrient cycle. As it is, the unsustainable and discredited practice of high-grading, where the large diameter, valuable trees are removed and only low-grade, small diameter trees remain, already compounds this problem in our woodlands. Until mainstream forestry and forest agencies get their houses in order, this problem poses a significant threat to our woodlands with or without salvage logging.

From a practical perspective, there will be plenty of woodlands in New England available for timber salvage after severe wind events that are neither part of ecological reserves nor particularly ecologically sensitive. Private landowners are going to want to clean up their woods regardless of whether it would be environmentally better to leave them a wreck. The big difference between western Massachusetts and the American West is that foresters and loggers here get most of their livelihood from working on private land instead of lands held in public trust by the federal government. I therefore do not think it would represent a significant economic hardship to exclude salvage operations, except where needed to reopen pubic access trails, from public lands with forest reserve and sensitive habitats.

We need more studies from places besides the West and about more recent timber salvage than the 1938 Hurricane to inform responsible forest management decisions on this issue. However, we should not discount what data we have because it is the result of studies that have only been able to assess short-term impacts. Responsible foresters and thoughtful scientists have a tremendous role to play in this debate, and as Aldo Leopold said; "the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces."

January 12, 2006

About ten years ago in Santa Fe, a bunch of foresters got together and discovered they were of like minds when it came to the state of their profession and mainstream forestry. They were private consulting foresters trying to do the right thing while making a living, and public service foresters toiling away at state and federal agencies. What they saw when they looked around the forests and woodlands in their regions sickened them.

The woods were being hammered. There were too many "timber beasts" out there taking advantage of landowners and high-grading timber so that virtually no trees of marketable or wildlife value remained. The regulations governing forest cutting practices did little to safeguard the ecology of the woodlands or hold foresters, loggers, and sawmills to ethical standards. Environmentalists who might have been natural allies with foresters trying to practice ecological principles in forest management instead associated all forestry with clear cutting and the destructive, short term harvests that were the industry standard.

These men and women were inspired to learn that they had colleagues across the country who imagined a different way for forestry: one that provided a living for foresters but placed the long-term health and viability of managed woodlands over other considerations. Together they formed the Forest Stewards Guild, today known as the Forest Guild, to serve and expand their community of ecologically minded and principled forestry professionals. They were joined by conservation land managers and allied professionals, adopting a progressive mission and "First Principles". The Guild set about actively working toward the day when mainstream forestry practices will reflect these values.

In the interest of full disclosure, I've been a Guild member for several years as an "allied professional" and recently agreed to act as Guild coordinator for the Guild in Connecticut and Rhode island, where we've got about 10 members at last count but aim to add more.

Guilders are an unusual bunch. Those I have worked with are of varied stripes and temperaments. A couple of "b-loggers" (my friend Joe Zorzin in particular) are notorious in some quarters for excoriating hypocrisy wherever they find it. What unites us are a belief in better forestry and a willingness to adhere to the highest standards.

The mission of the Forest Guild is to promote ecologically, economically, and socially responsible forestry as a means of sustaining the integrity of forest ecosystems and the human communities dependent upon them. Every applicant for Guild membership submits a statement of personal values and agrees to adhere to some remarkable principles. Among these are the belief that a forester's first duty is to the forest and its future. A Guild forester will disassociate from a client with management directives that conflict with the mission and principles of the Guild and when dialog and education fail to address them. Far from high-minded posturing, disassociation from unethical practices really happens, despite the economic hardship it may cause the Guild forester to walk away from a lucrative job and the possibility of more work with that less scrupulous employer.

One of the best practices of the Forest Guild has been the recognition and promotion of model forests. I recently had the pleasure of peer reviewing a model forest nomination in Massachusetts, and the contrast between the thoughtful, long-term management practices on that property and surrounding woodlands managed on short-rotations, often without the benefit of a consulting forester, let along a Guild member, was striking. Stands that were managed for maple, for example, had fine specimens of other trees left to mature rather than culled, and a diversity of both species and forest structure that in our area is usually only found in older, unmanaged woodlands.

The Guild is up against many hurdles in its effort to mainstream its approach to forestry. As with many small non-profit organizations, it has struggled in recent years when funding sources failed to sustain its growth and its decentralized nature caused it to assume a very different character in some regions. Today, the Guild is reengaging its members while working to broaden its impact. It has the potential to be not just the conscience of the forestry profession but a valued partner in forestry reform and conservation overall.

There's a guy who drives around Central Massachusetts with a big sign on his truck that says "Money for Your Trees." It is a dirty little secret that too many loggers take advantage of landowner ignorance and buy timber at a fraction of its true value, just as too many foresters are willing to sign off on low-value, short-term harvests rather than encouraging landowners to invest in growing bigger trees and healthier woodlands. This is not the way of the Forest Guild, and when the day comes when such practices are as unacceptable in the forestry profession as second hand smoke in the modern workplace, the Guild will have played its part to bring that about.

January 07, 2006

Before becoming homeowners, my wife and I rented half a house in Great Barrington, Massachusetts by the Rte 7 bridge. The property was right on the river, one of the few residences in Town with real access to the Housatonic. It was cool and inviting down there by the ledges and there was a nice patch of sunny lawn near the water, but I wouldn't have called it particularly private. However one memorable day, much to my surprise, I walked over to the top of the bank and observed a young woman, unknown to me or to my landlord, sedately reading Cosmo down there like she owned the place, with neither a stitch of clothing on nor any regard for modesty. Possibly it was not a woman at all but a vagrant selkie having just hauled out on the grass and shed her skin. She did leave her magazine and a water bottle behind after she decided to move on, though, which certainly made my landlord think less charitably of her trespassing than otherwise.

I certainly can't explain her appearance but I think exhibitionism probably wasn't the motivating factor. All those cars passing by on Rte. 7 or stopped at the light on the bridge are too intent on the road, or their cell phone conversations, to pay any attention to what is going on down by the water. The river is largely invisible to motorists and there are not many pedestrians who cross the bridge. I suppose our uninvited sunbather may have been one of the few who did look over the rusted railing and noticed the deep green of the grass and the smooth gray of the rocks and thought it looked enticing and worth spending some time there on her tan.

One thing I am more certain about is that the thought of skinny dipping in the Housatonic was not one of her considerations. The attraction is aesthetic, but that stops at the waterline. Just about everyone knows that Housatonic water has PCBs. In the four years I lived by the river I never so much as dipped a hand into the current.

Reclaiming the river might seem a mad dream, but if so there are an increasing number of lunatics in the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills who are willing to take on the challenge. The Great Barrington River Walk has reintroduced many residents to the forgotten beauty of the river without having to resort to trespass. There are numerous watershed and river advocacy groups all along the Housatonic who together have held GE's feet to the fire and demanded accountability. For some it has become their life's work. For others it has forged a regional connection that extends from Pittsfield Massachusetts far down the river in Connecticut.

The force of this citizen and non-profit activity can be be seen in the public comments recorded on the EPA's official Housatonic clean up website. A recent example is a case in point. GE is required by EPA to propose interim media protection goals (IMPGs) for the rest of the river. The corporation released a 404 page report in September that provoked a massive outcry from a wide group of stakeholders. GE proposed a weaker performance standard than the EPA's, with ranges of PCB levels for species in the watershed that far exceeded the parts per million (ppm) allowed by the USDA for safe human consumption of fish and game - let alone for swimming.

The public response was resounding. A directory of public comments can be found at this link and there are others not on this list but also posted by EPA. EPA did the right thing and sharply rejected GE's proposal, requiring a more conservative standard for the rest of river protection goals. EPA's response noted numerous deficiencies in GE's proposal and does not pull many punches. To quote from page 3 of the summary response document; "(T)he specification of such wide ranges of concentrations (of PCB ppm), many of which are not protective, becomes, from a practical perspective, meaningless, uninformative, and needlessly complicates the application of the IMPGs to the screening of remedial alternatives."

I commend EPA and its Rest of River Project Manager Susan Svirsky for holding to this high standard. There were comments from state and federal agencies that certainly reinforced this decision, but there were so many public comments - from concerned citizens, conservation non-profits, watershed associations, area businesses, and municipalities - that this latest attempt by GE to limit its liability and minimize its obligations could not pass unnoticed.

There are many heroes working for the Housatonic. There are former GE employees who are willing to be whistle blowers. There are courageous neighborhoods demanding that their children's health be safeguarded at home and at school where PCB disposal puts them at risk. There are dedicated volunteers on numerous boards and organizations who attend every meeting, call the media when attention must be paid, and work for the day when the river will no longer be overlooked or suspect but instead the lifeblood of riverside communities. There is so much still to do, but more and more of us love that dirty water. We hope to be able to sing of the Housatonic what Pete Seeger sings of the Hudson, another river with PCBs from GE: "the river may be dirty now, but she's getting cleaner every day."